I personally am not now, nor have I ever been, a gun owner. I keep meaning to go the local firing range and take lessons (operating on the principle that, since I’m surprisingly good at darts, I might be good at target shooting too), but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Nevertheless, my personal laziness and history aside, I know a Constitutional right when I see one, and I’m always delighted to see those vindicated.

The opinion (including the dissent) is 157 pages long (which surprises me, since the Amendment’s language is one sentence long), so I haven’t plowed through the whole thing — and, barring the unlikely event that I find myself actually litigating a gun rights case — I probably never will. Still, I’m starting to read it now, and if I stick with it and anything particularly wonderful (from the opinion) or awful (from the dissent) leaps out at me, I’ll let you know.

The one thing that does immediately leap out is that Kennedy has fully and completely filled O’Connor’s shoes as the swing vote. The case went the way it did only because he chose to side with the four strict constructionists on the court, rather than the four activists.

The decision is another reminder that an Obama presidency, which will give him the chance to appoint at least one, and possibly more, Supreme Court justices is an extremely dangerous thing. I know that many people who are lukewarm about or dislike McCain are assuming that, even if Obama gets his hands on the court, he’ll be able to touch only the old liberals, such as Stevens or Ginsberg. This thinking is a mistake. Bad things happen and there is always the possibility (God forbid), that one of the strict constructionist seats may suddenly open up. Do you really want to take the chance that something bad happens and Obama gets to fill the vacancy?

UPDATE: Another thing leaping out: Scalia is a wonderful writer — lucid and simple. He complete avoids the turgid, serpentine, incredibly boring prose that routinely characterizes opinions by O’Connor (Ret.), Ginsberg, and Stevens. This opinion is actually written in English a lay person can understand.

Interestingly, thinking about it, the worst writers are always the activists: Ginsberg, Stevens, O’Connor, etc. I suspect that, since their arguments are so often not bounded by actual American law, they have to throw up huge, wordy, impenetrable smoke-screens to hide that fact. The strict constructionists, who are writing within a sound framework, have no need to hide or dissemble.

[This is one of my recent posts that was pretty much unavailable due to Blogger troubles, so I’m republishing it, slightly edited, here.]

Apparently Justice Ginsburg, while in South Africa, was heaping disrespect on the American Constitution. (What is it lately with American public figures going abroad to denigrate America? Think Al Gore here.) Anyway, as noted in this Power Line post about Justice Ginsburg she summarized her whole judicial philosophy this way:

To a large extent, I believe, the critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why U.S. courts refer to foreign and international court decisions. We refer to decisions rendered abroad, it bears repetition, not as controlling authorities, but for their indication, in Judge Wald’s words, of “common denominators of basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed.”

John, at PowerLine, comes back with the perfect response:

This is, to put it politely, nonsense. In our system of government, the courts are not called on to determine what “basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed” requires. For legal purposes, issues of “basic fairness” were decided when the Constitution was authored and approved by the initial thirteen states, and when the document has been amended over the subsequent centuries.

The real issue here is: what is the Constitution? Justice Scalia has famously noted that the Constitution is a legal document which, like all legal documents, says some things and does not say others. In Justice Ginsburg’s view the Constitution is, on the contrary, a roving charter for nine individuals to decide what “basic fairness” requires. It should hardly be necessary to point out that the former understanding, which was universal until quite recently, is a charter of freedom, inasmuch as the people’s representatives can vote on amendments. Conversely, the “basic fairness” approach is a form of tyranny in which a small elite can impose its policy preferences on the rest of us.

It is also utterly unworkable. There is a reason why people reduce legal documents to writing: it’s the only way to know what the deal is. Under Justice Ginsburg’s approach, the “law” is ineffable. There is no way to know from one day to the next what it might be.

We can only wait for the day when Justice Ginsburg decides that she’d rather lie in the sun in her backyard and catch a few “Z’s”, than slog off to the Court every day. And we can only hope that we reaches this conclusion in the next two years.

By the way, I’ve learned that Justice Ginsburg has been on the receiving end of threats, which apparently triggered this portion of her speech. While I don’t condone, and never would condone, any threats, I think the threats and her speech are apples and oranges. That is, the fact that fringe people both support strict Constructionism and threaten Supreme Court justices has nothing to do with the merits either of judicial activism or strict Constructionism. I think the former is shoddy thinking and the latter the only way to run a country so that you don’t have demagogic rule by judges. And I think threatening Supreme Court justices is a criminal act, and nothing to do with this discussion.

UPDATE: If you want to know how judges who are not judicial activitists view their responsibilities on the bench, and if you want to understand why their viewpoint is more consistent with the role the Constitution plays in America, read this article.